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Edison’s Ghosts: The Untold Weirdness of History’s Greatest Geniuses by Katie Spalding encompasses 30 mini-biographies of famous geniuses that show their human side and the unbelievably naïveté, to be kind, mistakes they’ve made. Dr. Spalding is a mathematician and a writer, this is her first book.

I actually put this book on the back burner, but if I would have known how much I’d enjoy it I would have read it immediately. The book has my sense of humor and taught me several things I didn’t know.

Edison’s Ghosts by Katie Spalding attempts and succeeds to make those who are bigger than life more human. The author tells of some of their idiosyncrasies and missteps in a funny, relatable manner.

I was lucky enough to work with many very smart people and can attest that I witnessed occurrences that, to the not-so-smart-people seem to be mindboggling. However, I’ve always maintained many super-successful people are not “normal”, which is the reason for their fame, and maybe fortune.

I have read several of these stories in full-length biographies, Einstein, da Vinci, and Napoleon, for example. But this book is much more succinct and very entertaining, I even recommended it to my teenage children.

This is the type of book that I used to love as a pre-teen / teen reader. These stories also made dinner conversations much more entertaining than “how was school today?” type of inquiries. Entertaining stories like the ones in this book always seem to stick, and I know that my kids used several such stories (some in the book) for school projects or quiz bowls.

One of the aspects that I like is that the book makes its point that being very-smart and high-achiever does not necessarily make one a good human being. A statement that we miss in idolizing people who, like every else, have their own faults and weird idiosyncrasies. ( )